CAREER: Distributed estimation and control for energy efficient buildings

智力价值：本研究的目标是通过对大型建筑的供暖、通风和空调（HVAC）系统进行实时估计和控制，从而显著提高其能源效率。本研究的关键智力价值在于HVAC能源优化问题的新公式，该问题依赖于通过估算（热负荷和入住率）来减少不确定性，从而使控制设计问题易于处理。过去和现在对暖通空调系统能量最优控制的研究都是假设热负荷和占用率是已知的。这种假设限制了它们在实践中的适用性。技术研究计划利用了来自不同领域的几个组成部分。图形模型，迭代方法，分布式MPC框架？产生一个显示有希望的初步结果的综合框架。除了设计估计和控制算法外，还计划研究建立与算法无关的性能限制，这将增加我们对分布式估计和控制的基本限制的理解。最后，计划在实际建筑物中进行广泛的实验验证，以证明该方法的实用性。更广泛的影响：拟议研究的成功完成将导致美国二氧化碳排放量的大幅减少，并改善国家？美国能源安全。这项研究将通过与建筑能源行业的主要参与者联合技术公司（United Technologies）计划的工业合作和技术示范，影响美国的建筑能源行业。针对社区大学学生的教育部分有可能直接为美国提供与就业相关的培训？美国的劳动力，尤其是那些没有四年大学学位的人。研究课题的时效性将有助于提高本科生对工程研究的参与度。此外，该技术研究将影响广泛的应用，包括空间分布传感器和执行器的复杂动态时空过程的估计和控制。电网的运行、空中交通、高速公路和通信网络的监测和控制是这项研究可能有用的几个例子。

Intellectual Merit: The goal of the proposed research is to achieve significant improvement in energy efficiency of large buildings by real-time estimation and control of their the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems The key intellectual merit of the proposed research lies in the novel formulation of the HVAC energy optimization problem, which relies on uncertainty reduction through estimation (of thermal loads and occupancies) to make the control design problem tractable. Past and current research in energy optimal control of HVAC systems has assumed that the thermal loads and occupancies are known. This assumption has limited their applicability in practice. The technical research plan utilizes several components from diverse areas ? graphical models, iterative methods, distributed MPC framework ? to produce an integrated framework that shows promising preliminary results. In addition to design of estimation and control algorithms, research is planned on establishing algorithm-independent performance limits, which will increase our understanding of fundamental limits in distributed estimation and control. Finally, extensive experimental validation in real buildings is planned to demonstrate the practical applicability of the methods.Broader Impact: Successful completion of the proposed research will lead to a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions in the United States, and improvement in the nation?s energy security. The research will impact the building-energy business sector in the U.S. via the industrial collaboration and technology demonstration that are planned with United Technologies, a key player in building-energy business. The educational component that targets community college students has the potential to directly provide employment-relevant training to America?s workforce, especially those without four-year college degrees. The timeliness of the research topic will help bring about greater engagement of undergraduate students in engineering research. Furthermore, the technical research will impact a broad spectrum of applications that involve estimation and control of spatio-temporal processes with complex dynamics with spatially distributed sensors and actuators. Operation of the electric power grid, monitoring and control of traffic in air, highways, and communication networks are a few examples where this research can be useful.